Dystopian Stories: Handmaids Tale Versus Brave New World

Dystopian Societies The government in Huxley's Brave New World and Atwood's Handmaid's Tale, both use different methods of obtaining control over people, but are both similar in the fact that These novels prove that there is no freedom in dystrophic societies when the government controls everything including individuality in order to keep their societies the way they want it to be.In both societies the individuals have very little and are controlled strictly by the government. In Handmaid's Tale and Brave New World, Dystopia is shown in each of the novels through issues of conflict demonstrating the authority over knowledge, class systems, and the transformation from repulsion to normalcy in their societies. It is evident in both novels that a dystrophic society exists through the authors' use of conflict to eliminate the control of knowledge of the past and present in order for there to be stability in both societies. The Brave New World society have sacrificed all past knowledge of the world, including art, science and literature with the goal of maintaining a stable society. John is the only major character to have grown up outside of the World State. He has spent his life alienated from his village on the New Mexico Savage Reservation, and he finds himself similarly unable to fit in to World State society. His entire worldview is based on his knowledge of Shakespeare’s plays, it enables him to verbalize his own complex emotions and reactions, it provides him with a framework from which to criticize World State values (Sparknotes 2012). In the Handmaid's tale, the entire structure of the Gilead society, was built around the single goal of reproduction. Gilead is a society facing a crisis of radically dropping birthrates and to solve the problem; it forces state control on the means of reproduction. The government strips the women of their rights to vote, the right to hold property or jobs and most importantly the right to own any form of knowledge. All Handmaids are forbidden from reading or writing, this is an attempt by the leaders of the society to control the knowledge their citizens can use. So women won't get any idea of becoming more educated and independent from men, because education can threaten men' belief of superiority.

The government in Huxley's Brave New World and Atwood's Handmaid's Tale, both use castes and class as a method of obtaining control over their people. During the period which the embryos are made, the embryos travel in bottles along a conveyor belt through a factory like building, and are conditioned to belong to one of five castes: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, or Epsilon. The people in charge of this, estimate that they need various members of each caste, and the Hatchery produces human beings to match their mathematical figures. This directly follows the economic rules of supply and demand. Through the Podsnap and Bokanovsky Processes which allows the Hatchery to produce hundreds of embryos that are very much alike. Alphas tend to be more like leaders of science (the "geeks") they are usually chosen for government. Betas can do this too, but they are more lazy and leeway. The Gammas are what used to be called "Average" in school, before "inclusion". They do office work, administrative stuff, but they're not geniuses. The Deltas are not totally dumb, but just smart enough to do the grunt work that nobody else wants to, like drive trucks and serve the upper classes. The Epsilons, or lowest, are semi-retarded and conditioned to do more labor like things such as shovel garbage. In the Handmaids tale there is somewhat similar as well. Commanders of the Faithful is the ruling class. Because of their status, they are entitled to establish a patriarchal household with a Wife, a Handmaid if necessary, Marthas (female servants) and Guardians who are soldiers "used for routine policing and other menial functions,"
(Atwood 27). In both novels, the humans are treated as nothing more than `things' that can perform tasks imposed by the government.

In both novels, Atwood and Huxley create the fact that a society's beliefs can be transformed from repulsion to normalcy. In HMT, Offred remembers her mother saying that it is "truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations." (Atwood 271). Offred's satisfaction after she begins her relationship with Nick shows the truth of this insight. Offred's situation restricts her horribly compared to the freedom her former life allowed, but her relationship with Nick allows her to regain the smallest piece of her former existence. The physical affection becomes a reward that makes the restrictions almost bearable. Women in general support Gilead's continuation by willingly participating in it, serving as Handmaid's of the totalitarian state. On the other hand, BNW is similar in the fact that the individuals believe that the society is normal, but different for the reason that they are conditioned to believe that from birth. The state creates a superficial, happy world through the use of conditioning, and escapes from reality such as the feelies and soma, "the perfect drug" (Huxley 47). The citizens of BNW are programmed to enjoy their destiny and contribute to social stability. Science and technology have created a world where no one ever needs to suffer and the leaders are free to control their flocks of sheep. Both The Handmaids tale and the movie Brave new world illustrate a dystopia in which an all-powerful state controls the behaviours and actions of its people in order to maintain its own stability and power through issues eliminating the authority over knowledge, class systems, and the transformation from repulsion to normalcy in their societies. Atwood and Huxley forewarn that in an all-powerful society, it is destined to become corrupt.